Why Efficient Meetings are Contributing to Employee Disengagement

Designing effective presentations and engaging meetings for maximum impact is a passion of mine. If you’d like to know more, you should get in touch with me here on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected]

"There is nothing we enjoy less when it is more entertaining."

Through speaking to professionals on our podcast, it's incredible the themes and trends that appear across all aspects of corporate life. You can't help but piece them together and see the overarching principle that every business and every industry revolves around two things:

1. People, and
2. Those people communicating with each other.

Disengagement and Presenteeism

In our recent episode with Mel Kettle, she highlighted that Gallup found 13% of employees go to work and feel engaged. That says that only 1 in 12 people go to work and are engrossed in what they're doing and enjoy it. That's an awful lot of people who aren't.

She goes on to say that presenteeism is one of the causes of disengagement at work. Opposite to absenteeism where an individual simply isn't at work, presenteeism is when an individual is physically in the workplace but mentally they're not. They're understimulated, missing the purpose of their role and disengaged.

When this happens, productivity nose-dives resulting in revenue crashing resulting in profits plummeting.

And I posit that a change of communication is key to changing those numbers in your office.

What's The Cost?

In our recent podcast episode with humour engineer, Andrew Tarvin, he quotes that while studies vary, in the US 70% of the workforce is completely disengaged. This costs the economy an estimated $500 billion in lost productivity every year.

And when we do the math on that, it's easy to find out that it averages to $4639 per employee per year that disengagement is costing you. Not to mention employee turnover. Not to mention creating a culture of non-productivity.

But people don't want to dislike their job, they don't want to be disengaged. Wouldn't you agree that people want to find some enjoyment in those 40 hours per week?

Are Meetings The Problem?

Doodle.com in their 2019 report found that professionals spend 2 hours per week in meetings they find pointless, a waste of more than $541 billion in employee time in 2019. The average professional spends three hours a week in meetings – making two-thirds of all meetings unnecessary or a waste of time.

And when combined with phrases like 'Another meeting that should have been an email' and my favourite 'Death by PowerPoint', we can only imagine the human cost of having poor communication.

Efficient or Effective

It is not rare for businesses to realise their meetings drag on too long and make a move to push presenters to be more efficient in their delivery. To take up less time, leaving more time for busy professionals to do what they do best; work and be productive. Only, there is a problem. Let's look at the two words:

Efficient: Taking less time to do a task

Effective: Being more impactful with time

The issue when we move towards efficient communications and conversations is that it strips out so much context and so much purpose that while meetings may become shorter, they remain equally pointless. Efficient communication that 'gets the job done quickly' rarely does. Effective communication, however, that takes the time to explain, to bring context and to deliver purpose is worth the investment in time.

It's another case of fast is slow, and slow is fast.

So if communication was made more effective through an efficient system to plan, design and deliver presentations, what would that mean in your office? What human effect would that have? Confidence, engagement, and/or satisfaction? With a well-articulated purpose comes direction. Now we have productivity which leads to revenue and profit.

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At Presentation Boss, we help detail-oriented experts to plan, design and deliver their presentations with clarity and confidence. Using "The PB Method" we can help you to clearly communicate your message, recommendations and avoid another meeting of 'Death by PowerPoint". Thomas Krafft does not know a life without public speaking. He began as an instructor in aviation and his entire adult life has been dedicated to coaching others to improve their own presentation skills. A wizard of PowerPoint design and presentation strategy, Thomas comes with a deep understanding built from dedicating years to the art and science of presenting. Along with Kate Norris of Presentation Boss, Thomas now helps people confidently move their presentations (including PowerPoint decks) from average to awesome!